Edinburgh Festival 2011: Edinburgh in brief

Short, sharp reviews from our critics at the Edinburgh Festival

A street performer at Edinburgh FestivalPhoto: Chris Watt

5:00PM BST 25 Aug 2011

Thursday 25 August

Sam Simmons, Gilded Balloon Wine Bar

A stupendous blast of full-on, absurdist surrealism from the Australian comic, a little like a latter-day Ionesco-on-speed. His show, Meanwhile, takes the form of a whistlestop tour of the world, zipping with lightning speed from one brilliantly inconsequential event to the next. One second, he’s dressed as a spaceman, the next he’s checking up on his suicidal pine cone and menacing the audience with tacos. The many perfectly timed musical cues remind you how expertly it’s all choreographed, despite the apparent, boggle-eyed mayhem.

The London-based comedian has an almost uniquely warm, sweetly conspiratorial way with an audience. However, even combined with a nice fantasia on the Brontës and a handful of good lines, this cherishable quality is not enough to compensate for the overpowering preachiness of her Government-bashing set The Future is Another Place. Her newly found political conviction feels genuine, her anger tangible, but she hasn’t yet quite found a way of wringing consistently first-class comic material from it.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550), until Sun

Rating: * * *

Mark Monahan

Chris Ramsey, Pleasance Beside

Having made his Fringe debut only last year, South Shields’s finest returns to Edinburgh with a strong, high-energy hour of stand-up that builds to a life-affirming pay-off. Offermation was inspired by three round-robin missives from people he had never met, that materialised in his letterbox.

And, although the show is first and foremost an account of how his and their lives eventually became entwined, he packs in plenty of witty asides. Make no mistake, this boy is going to be a star.

Pleasance Beside (0131 556 6550), until Sun

Rating: * * * *

Mark Monahan

Wednesday 24 August

The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer, Underbelly

This beautiful little show from Australia has been likened by the New York Times to a theatrical “WALL-E” and they're not wrong. Instead of relying on words, puppeteer-performer Tim Watts uses his hands, an array of lo-fi micro-puppets, a customised snorkel and a wizard combination of a big circular gauze screen together with near-continuous faux-naif animation to tell the story of little Alvin who plunges deep underwater looking for the burning white light of his dead wife’s soul. Watts gives us a vision of a civilisation entirely submerged by global warming’s effects but amid the heartbreak locates moments of delight, wonder and uplift. You may well come out humming Mika’s "Happy Endings" but that’s a small price to pay for a big treat.

Tickets: 0844 545 8252

Rating: * * * *

Dominic Cavendish

Young Pretender, Underbelly

There’s no doubting the flair of EV Crowe’s writing in this modern and modish-minded take on the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the failed Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Sticking two fingers up at the conventions of historical drama, Paul Woodson’s pouting, dandyish, Jagger-meets-Morrissey Prince speaks as might any twentysomething youth today who thinks he’s “it” and learns the hard way that there’s more to life than talking the talk; this boy-wonder ends up in a girl’s dress, defeated and unshaggable. “I’m - it sounds stupid - a pioneer”, he’ll say; or “I’ve said we’re doing this - we’re doing this”. The Libertines’ The Man Who Would Be King pumps up the peacock-magnificence of Joe Murphy’s production for Nabokov. It looks and sounds cool but along the way the heart of the story and a sense of historical veracity goes strangely missing.

Tickets: 0844 545 8252

Rating: * * *

Dominic Cavendish

Chat Masala with Hardeep Singh Kohli, Gilded Balloon Teviot

It’s hard not to warm to the genial charm of this self-styled “fat, hairy Glaswegian” in a pink Sikh turban and Scottish kilt as he cooks up - and serves up - a curry over the course of an hour, while bantering with three drop-in guests. On the afternoon I attended Helen Lederer was the star attraction and Kohli couldn’t quite get over the time that Toby Young and his wife turned up for dinner 90 minutes late without so much as a bottle of wine by way of apology. With tittle-tattle like that on offer, what’s not to like? It’s also “the only show in the world that makes a chutney”. Fun.

Tickets: 0131 622 6552

Rating: * * *

Dominic Cavendish

Andrew Maxwell, Assembly George Square

The Fringe’s foremost political comic is on cracking form, and has rewritten the opening section of his set after this month’s riots. Maxwell covers a huge amount of territory – from the Olympics and bankers to the Pope and royal weddings – guying every religion and political viewpoint along the way.

Tickets: (0131 623 3030) until Aug 29

Rating: * * * *

Veronica Lee

Alma Mater, St George’s West

In this weird but wonderful site-specific installation you are given an iPad and headphones to watch a 20-minute film about a little girl and her dead mum, made in the room - a full-scale child’s bedroom - where you sit alone. Sounds creepy but it’s a touching modern fairytale about childhood and family.

Tickets: (0131 225 7001) until Aug 29

Rating: * * * *

Veronica Lee

Monday August 22

You Once Said Yes, Underbelly

A show that invites you to run with an unfolding series of one-on-one encounters across the city. It’s suddenly as if everyone in Edinburgh wants to get to know you - tell you something, ask you something, and let you into their world. For Look Left Look Right to pull off this formidably executed 90 minutes for just one participant each time would be remarkable - but the whole thing runs on a continual basis, so that no sooner are you off on the next quest than they’re bracing themselves for the next incomer. On a clear day, it’s magical and unforgettable.

Tickets: 0844 545 8252

Rating: * * * * *

Tim Key: Masterslut, Pleasance Dome

After winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award two years ago, Key is back at the Fringe, with a well-filled, soapy bath in which to plunge (fully clothed) and around which he perambulates, offering up slyly witty, off-beat poems and deadpan asides, recurrently unsettling and teasing the audience. Just about the perfect, sophisticated antidote to bog-standard stand-up.

Tickets: 0131 556 6550

Rating: * * * *

Friday August 19

The Oh F__k Moment, St George’s West

It sounds like it could be the most irritating and intimidating show on the Fringe, but this remarkable piece of participatory theatre ranks as among the most absorbing and thought-provoking. An audience of about 18 are invited to join performers Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe around some work-tables to chat through what happens when you do something from which there’s no going back. Contributing anecdotes are gently invited but it’s what the pair offer, by way of personal example and poetical meditation, in exploring why it is we make - and should be allowed to make - mistakes, that really counts. "King" brilliant.

Tickets: 0131 226 0000

Rating: * * * *

Dominic Cavendish

The Time Out, Forest Fringe

The less revealed about what goes on in this interactive show from non zero one, in which a dozen participants are drawn together to form, at very short notice, a championship-contending water-polo team, probably the better. What one can say is that the endorphin-rush you get after being subjected to a highly entertaining pretend coaching-session, and being prodded to come out of your shell to share in the group dynamic, is almost unequalled by anything else on the Fringe. No swimming aptitude required - just a willingness to plunge into the arty unknown.

Tickets: www.forestfringe.co.uk

Rating: * * * *

Dominic Cavendih

Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut, Pleasance Courtyard

It’s not going to - at least it shouldn’t - win any awards for ground-breaking invention, but this potted stage version of the Bogart-Bergman classic, which carves up the principal roles between just three actors (able impersonators Gavin Mitchell, Jimmy Chisholm and Clare Waugh), combines a winningly amusing send-up of old Hollywood cliches and poor-theatre conventions with an affectionate homage to a much-loved classic.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550) until Aug 29

Rating: * * *

Dominic Cavendish

Seann Walsh: Ying and Young, Pleasance Courtyard

Walsh - who hails from generation “whatever” - has youth on his side, and a certain facility for looking comfortable onstage with a mic. But Ying and Young mines some of the most banal details of modern living imaginable - whether it’s the way a slow-blinking laptop can keep you awake at night, or the accidental dropping of some used toilet-paper in a public lavatory. He has promise but this is dire.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550) until Aug 28

Rating: * *

Dominic Cavendish

Gareth Richards: It’s Not the End of the World, Pleasance Courtyard

Richards introduced himself with a lovely show at last year’s Fringe, but this is a patchy follow-up, to put it kindly. Richards’ ambling, low-key style doesn’t easily suit his evening’s dispiriting theme (the threat of imminent apocalypse) or persuade us his reassurances are sourced in much conviction. Sadly also, the new songs he has penned (intoned to the bizarrely compelling accompaniment of retro-instrument the Omnichord) don’t have enough wit to turn polite smiles into big laughs. DC

Tickets: (0131 556 6550) until Aug 28

Rating: * *

Wednesday August 17

Spent, Pleasance Dome

A physically swift and comically ingenious deconstruction of what it has felt like to be tossed about by the economic tsunami. Ravi Jain and Adam Poalozza from Toronto inhabit a vault-load of characters - from two failed bank-workers, past harassed TV anchor-men right up to the unrepentant former CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld - all with city-slick timing.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550) until Aug 28

Rating: * * * *

Humphrey Ker is Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher!, Pleasance Courtyard

Gag-a-line funny show spoofing - and obliquely celebrating - Second World War derring-do from a star-in-the-making. Humphrey Ker portrays himself as the square-jawed incarnation of his grandfather, dropped behind enemy-lines in Nazi-held Romania to bust a nuclear dam. Anachronisms abound, in the manner of Armstrong and Miller’s WW2 pilots, but this isn’t a quick-fire sketch, it’s a drawn-out pleasure of a playlet. Bound to have a further life.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550) until Aug 28

Rating: * * * * *

Dominic Cavendish

John Peel’s Shed, Underbelly

John Osborne could hardly be more different from his notoriously querulous namesake: here the youngish Norwich poet and writer looks back in sweetly enthusiastic wonder at the radio shows that saved him from temping death-in-life, as he sifts his prize collection of vinyl rarities from – the title’s not kidding – DJ John Peel’s shed. A teatime treat. DC

Tickets: (0844 545 8252) until Aug 28

Rating: * * * *

Mad About the Boy, Udderbelly’s Pasture

The recent riots make this three-hander about a teenager gone bad, his school counsellor’s efforts to help him, and his Nigerian father’s lack of comprehension, feel both timely and urgent. It’s intelligently written, well-acted and thought-provoking, so it’s a shame that the ending proves so frustratingly abrupt.

Tickets: (0844 545 8252) until Aug 29

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

Translunar Paradise, Pleasance Dome

This gentle show uses dance, movement and music to tell the story of an old man coming to terms with his wife’s death, and the myriad joys and tragedies that made up their life together. It’s reputed to have had most audience members reaching for the tissues; I, however, remained uncharacteristically dry-eyed.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550) until Aug 29

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

Thirsty, Pleasance Courtyard

An energetic rollercoaster ride through the reasons that make so many of us reach for the bottle, from Leeds-based theatre company The Paper Birds. It’s exuberantly performed, and sometimes poignant, but feels more like a scratch performance than a fully formed show.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550) until Aug 28

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

Dream Pill, Underbelly

Beautifully acted 30-minute play about two nine-year-old sex-trafficked Nigerian girls from Clean Break, the theatre company that works with women affected by the criminal justice system. Based on extensive research into real-life cases of sex trafficking, this is vital, urgent theatre-making, its heartbreaking impact enhanced by the damp, dripping cellar in which it is performed.

Tickets: (0844 545 8252) until Aug 28

Rating: * * * *

Laura Barnett

The School of Night, Gilded Balloon Teviot

A John Grisham novel, borrowed from an audience member; somebody’s shipwright grandfather; an unlikely Britney Spears song about arithmetic: such are the varied sources of inspiration used by this five-strong troupe for their uproarious improvised scenes. Their faux-Shakespearean play is over-long, but otherwise this is intelligent, laugh-a-minute fare.

Tickets: (0131 622 6552) until Aug 18

Rating: * * * *

Laura Barnett

Elegy, Whitespace

This intense one-man show takes as its starting point the real-life, rarely reported persecution of gay Iraqi men by religious militia groups; many have fled their country for fear of being tortured or killed. The writing is beautiful in parts, but an unconvincing solo performance fails to draw us into the character’s terror and sadness.

Tickets: (0131 226 0000) until Aug 28

Rating: * *

Laura Barnett

The Horne Section, Assembly George Square

Comedian Alex Horne heads up this pink-shirted jazz band formed of childhood friends and fellow comics. The music is often impressive, but the humour infrequent and puerile, the proceedings unapologetically shambolic, and the comedians invited into guest-spots apparently rather the worse for wear and – much worse – largely unfunny.

Tickets: (0131 623 3030) until Aug 27

Rating: * *

Laura Barnett

King Lear

Wu Hsing-kuo writes, directs and stars in this one-man “free” version of Lear at the Lyceum Theatre which came to the international festival from Taiwan by way of the land of overkill. It’s an evening of gorgeous sights but little sense, in which, inhabiting multiple roles - and even stepping outside the “performance” altogether - the actor shows off an array of technical skills but sheds few insights into Shakespeare’s tragedy, besides the obvious one that you don’t have to be bonkers to take on the role, but it helps. It’s gone now, in a crash of cymbals and clackety-clack of wooden blocks. You didn’t miss much.

Rating: * *

Dominic Cavendish

Luke Wright: Cynical Ballads, Underbelly

It’s easy to be cynical about performance poetry but the ballad-inspired bombardments unleashed by fresh-faced Colchester lad Luke Wright are sit-up-and-listen good: a zestful relish for pump-action word-play combines with a thoughtful and deeply felt understanding of just how messed-up Britain is today, whether it’s celebrity-worship, elitist politicians or hellish anti-social behaviour. Thoroughly recommended.

Tickets: (0844 545 8252) until Aug 28

Rating: * * * *

Dominic Cavendish

Tuesday August 16

Those Magnificent Men, Udderbelly, Cowbarn

If we have forgotten the incredible tale of derring-do that was the first non-stop transatlantic flight - and the fact that it was two Brits (Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown) what swung it for King and Country in 1919 - then that’s partly because the modern entertainment industry has lost touch with the adage that truth is often stranger than fiction. In this jocular retelling of the adventure two actors (Ian Shaw and Richard Earl) play the stiff upper-lip heroes to spiffing perfection using a clutch of basic props to bring to creaky life the early days of aviation - while examining the mechanics of story-telling itself.

Tickets: 0844 545 8252

Dominic Cavendish

Rating: * * * *

Rose, Pleasance Forth

A well-crafted, relevant, winningly performed new play - rarer to find on the Fringe than you might think. Art Malik joins forces with his daughter Keira, newly graduated from LAMDA, in this subtle two-hander by Hywel Johns tracking the changing relationship between a Pakistani immigrant who tries too hard to adopt English ways and the deprived daughter who grows up to ask tough questions about her identity and the price they have paid for his reverence for western society.

Tickets: 0131 556 6550

Dominic Cavendish

Rating: * * * *

Beowulf: Thousand Years of Baggage, Assembly @ George Square

With wave after wave of cabaret-inspired show crashing noisily upon the shores of this year’s Fringe, this New York “SongPlay” (by Banana Bag & Bodice) stands out like a Viking long-boat loaded with fighting men. It wields a pleasing cacophony of musical styles along with much anachronistic wit and excess mad-cap energy to hew through to the blood-and-guts spirit of the Old English saga, in which Beowulf slays wicked Grendel and his ma.

Tickets: 0131 623 3030

Dominic Cavendish

Rating: * * * *

Elizabeth Blackadder, National Gallery of Scotland

80 year old Elizabeth Blackadder is an artist about whose botanical studies in watercolour I have been writing with sincere admiration for 20 years. When working on paper the delicate precision of Blackadder’s technique is unsurpassed. But when painting in oil on canvas, her talent mysteriously deserts her. The decision to fill the big exhibition spaces with her paintings, relegating the watercolours to two small galleries, was perverse.

Until January 2

Richard Dorment

Rating: *

Nathan Caton, Pleasance Baby Grand

A highly appealing hour of largely (but by no means entirely) racially inclined observations and anecdotes from this Londoner of Jamaican descent.

He has plenty of substance to say in Get Rich or Die Cryin’, but wears his intelligence lightly and knows when to prick the seriousness with some well-aimed, light-hearted self-deprecation. Highly recommended.

Tickets: (0131 556 6550), until Aug 29.

Mark Monahan

Rating: * * * *

Ali Cook, Gilded Balloon Dining Room

Conjuring mischief of the slickest kind, with everything from live goldfish that materialise out of thin air to a woman who disappears straight back into it. Taken as pure comedy, Principles and Deceptions falls short of many far more straightforward shows on the Fringe. But the star of ITV’s Penn and Teller: Fool Us is a lively host and will undoubtedly leave you with the question “How the hell did he do that?” rattling merrily around your brain.

Tickets: (0131 622 6552), until Aug 29.

Mark Monahan

Rating: * * *

Naz Osmanoglu, Underbelly Wee Coo

He looks like a Norwegian waiter and bellows like a cross between between an over-sexed strip-show MC and a loopy gentleman balloonist, but Naz Osmanoglu is on fact half Briton, half Turkish royalty, and a really rather good stand-up. His mildly uneven but overall strong set 1000% Awesome — in one of the Fringe’s more punishingly hot boxes — sees him tackle his mixed heritage with buckets of wit and charm, launching with a long but excellent riff on Bear Grylls and closing with his own coronation. Nice towel-based “intermission”, too.

Tickets: (0844 545 8252), until Aug 29

Mark Monahan

Rating: * * * *

Matt Forde, Underbelly Wee Coo

Laddish leftie Matt Forde is likeable, has a nice way with impersonations, and can rattle off a decent anecdote. He needs to relax, though, to laugh less (and less shrilly), and to axe the “this is going to shock you” set-ups. And, while expressing an enduring respect for Tony Blair feels like bravery, dedicating a hefty, almost laugh-free closing chunk of Dishonourable Member first to his own political leanings and then to a fantasia on Blair’s future re-election seems, rather, an all-too-successful attempt at torpedoing his own gig.

Tickets: (0844 545 8252), until Aug 28

Mark Monahan

Rating: * *

Friday August 12

Midnight Your Time, Assembly George Square

Diana Quick has done great things in her career; this is not one of them. Adam Brace’s monologue about an interfering middle class mother trying - mostly in vain - to connect online with her aid-worker daughter in the Palestinian territories has a suffocating sense of artifice about it, from the awkward reliance on addressing one-way remarks at a laptop to the laboured reiteration of maternal loneliness. A waste of a wonderful actress - and a surprise dud from an up-and-coming playwright.

Dominic Cavendish

Rating: * *

Skittles, Pleasance Courtyard

Where most people’s accounts of their love-lives and break-ups are probably best kept to themselves, or small circles of mates, geeky Richard Marsh’s witty, ingenious, poetically driven account of how a lovely office romance accelerated into a whirlwind marriage before crashing and burning in America during its honey-moon phase takes you to the heart of what it means to feel for another person and be left bereft. “You can write the world’s best poem - she’s never coming back,” he hears Sorrow telling him. This almost is that poem.

Dominic Cavendish

Rating: * * * *

Brett Goldstein, Pleasance Jackdome

The full title is Brett Goldstein Grew up in a Strip Club, but don’t be put off — there is not a feather boa or posing pouch in sight. Rather, this jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing Edinburgh newcomer delivers a sharply written, impeccably delivered, always charming monologue about how he came of age while running a pole-dancing joint in Spain with his father. It’s warm, wise stuff, the show superficially small but the themes and laughs big.

Until Aug 29. Tickets: 0131 556 6550

Rating: * * * *

Mark Monahan

Dave Gorman’s Power Point Presentation Assembly George Square

Theatre A typically slick and energetic offering from the Edinburgh veteran, from which we emerge (as ever) knowing both everything and nothing about him.

Computer-assisted sets are in fact ten-a-penny these days, and much of this material would work just fine without technological help. But when the form and content knit - as in Gorman’s frustrations about beards and mistaken Jewishness — it’s a delight.

Until Aug 28. Tickets: 0131 623 3030

Rating: * * *

Mark Monahan

Thursday August 11

Sunday in the Park with George

Students at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama scored a runaway success at last year’s Fringe with Spring Awakening. This year, a fresh crop of students has mounted this impressively slick production of Stephen Sondheim’s acclaimed musical exploring the life and models of pointillist painter Georges Seurat.

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

Joe Stilgoe — One Hour!

Jazz musician and composer Joe Stilgoe — son of Richard “Starlight Express” Stilgoe — tinkles through a highly entertaining hour of songs old and new. His between-song chat occasionally hits a bum note, but the musical highlights include jazzed-up versions of Beyonce’s Single Ladies and Price Tag by Jessie J.

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

Elis James: Do You Remember The First Time?

Welsh comedian Elis James has bags of charm, so it’s a shame that his set is so uneven. There’s the odd moment of hilarity, but his delivery is frequently stumbling, and his over-long material about his encounters with sports presenter Jim Rosenthal is, by his own admission, recycled from previous shows.

Rating: * *

Laura Barnett

Wednesday August 10

Futureproof, Traverse Theatre

Dismal play from Lynda Radley about a failing freak-show - complete with bearded lady, gargantuan man, and conjoined twins - which drags towards a crossroads moment for the performers: do they tailor themselves for new entertainment needs or go it alone, finally true to themselves? Interesting point, but attention to arresting visual detail aside, there’s too much bog-standard writing and direction.

Rating: * *

Dominic Cavendish

The Wheel, Traverse Theatre

It’s a case of “groundhog play”, as Zinnie Harris goes once more unto the breach of war-zone drama. This is her strongest piece for a while, with an interesting, Mother Courage-style storyline about a Spanish farm-woman who - overtaken by military events - journeys across a ravaged landscape with two children and a baby in tow. A huge amount has been thrown at this National Theatre of Scotland production, but it’s odd how little of it sticks once you’re released from its earnest clutches.

Rating: * * *

Dominic Cavendish

Man of Valour, Traverse Theatre

Compelling monologue - written by Michael West - about a desolate Dublin office-worker who falls apart when he collects his dead father’s ashes and chucks them in the Liffey. Using mime and minimal words, Paul Reid’s tour de force performance jump-cuts between different characters and moods (fantasy, spoofing comedy, grim suicidal reality) in ways that add up to a delirious portrait of masculinity today.

Rating: * * * *

Dominic Cavendish

Wondrous Flitting, Traverse Theatre

One golden nugget of religious fascination - about the mysterious, miraculous “Holy House of Loreto” - is turned to no great dramatic use in Mark Thomson’s picaresque speculation as to what would happen if it came crashing into an ordinary suburban family home - prompting the clueless son of the household to go on an existential quest. With better care and further redrafting, this might yet rise from the deadly.

Rating: * *

Tickets: 0131 228 1404

The Table, Pleasance Dome

Astonishingly accomplished puppetry from the excellent London-based company Blind Summit, who have previously collaborated with Complicite, English National Opera and the Royal Opera House. Here, we meet a lonely old man desperate for human contact; watch three paintings run amok; and witness a heartbreaking tale told with stick drawings.

Rating: * * * *

Laura Barnett

Hannibal Buress, Pleasance Upstairs

An original, intermittently warped hour of observations and anecdotes from this young American writer for Saturday Night Live. He’s a laconically remote, wilfully uningratiating performer, and his musings (on being outside, on napkins, on Jimmy Carter) generally stem from a cat-like aura of detached independence. All a little chilly, then, and a little disappointing with the audience the evening I caught him, but he’s sharp as knives, and his jokes and delivery are nothing if not suitable bedfellows.

Until Aug 29. Tickets: 0131 556 6550

Rating: * * *

Mark Monahan

Idiots of Ants, Pleasance Forth

Foul-mouthed bees; a wedding proposal at gunpoint; an air-guitar, complete with air-groupies. Such is the inspired malarkey in the four-strong sketch troupe’s new show, Model Citizens. Ditching last-year’s high-techery, the Ants have reached a new, immensely entertaining creative high — though please, guys, keep the giggly “corpsing” as a delightful special effect, not as a mainstay.

Until Aug 29. Tickets: 0131 556 6550

Rating: * * * *

Mark Monahan

Alison Thea-Skot, Just the Tonic @ the Caves

This talented Fringe débutante and Armando Iannucci admirer has a tricky time for comedy (midday) and a pig of a room, too, but do take a punt on her offering The Human Tuning Fork. This character-based tale of singing coach and arsonist Tiff Mason reveals Thea-Skot as a satisfyingly dark writer and wildly versatile performer, and Tiff is a terrific new comic creation. Some tightening of the show’s central third – which sags at present – and it could be a genuine winner.

Until Aug 28. Tickets: 0131 556 5375

Rating: * * *

Mark Monahan

Amateur Transplants: Adam Kay’s Smutty Songs, Pleasance Forth

Seldom can “smutty” have been such an understatement as in the the title of this set by writer, singer and pianist Adam Kay. In fact, these reworkings of pop favourites are more likely to be filthy at best, depraved at worst — and great, guilty fun. Kay’s increasing nosedive into alcoholic mummy’s-boy confession and despair gives it added momentum, and, frankly, how not to love a show that includes a song about meeting various French presidents — to the tune of Katy Perry — with the chorus “I kissed de Gaulle - and I liked it”.

Until Aug 29 (0131 556 6550)

Rating: * * * *

Mark Monahan

Shazia Mirza, Gilded Balloon Sportsmans

British-Asian comedian Shazia Mirza is such a smart woman, her world-view so entirely sympathetic. But all too often, her race-and-religion-orientated show Busybody sees her take richly comic set-ups and, through either faltering timing or under-writing, fail to let them flower. She may have been having an off-day when I saw her — and certainly, in both shape and situation, the Sportsmans is an unlovely space. Hopefully, she will settle in as the run progresses.

Until Aug 28 (0131 622 6552)

Rating: * *

Tuesday August 9

Dusk Rings A Bell, Assembly George Square

Model-turned-actress Abi Titmuss returns to the Fringe in an American two-hander about a woman who returns to the beachfront house where she holidayed as a child and meets the man with whom she once shared a teenage kiss. There are some nice moments, but the play is both mawkish and overly verbose, and the performances never quite ignite.

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

The Brandreth Papers, Gilded Balloon Teviot

Benet Brandreth, son of Gyles, is on fine, dinner-jacketed form in this delightfully surreal series of tall tales, taking in his (imagined) time as a Hollywood hunk, feted conceptual artist, and rescuer of the Duke of Edinburgh from a most invidious fate. Guaranteed to raise a smile, and a fair few belly-laughs.

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

Monday August 8

Lili La Scala: Songs to Make You Smile, Assembly George Square

Retro songstrel Lili La Scala returns with a suite of humorous songs from yesteryear. Her Gracie Fields-esque voice delights, as do many of the songs, which take in Ivor Novello, George Formby and Cole Porter. If she just took her between-song patter up a notch, this show could be something really special.

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

Jessica Fostekew: Luxury Tramp, Gilded Balloon Teviot

This, Fostekew’s debut Edinburgh show, is not, thankfully, about her travails as a high-class hooker, but about the fact she manages to be both posh and trashy.

Her self-deprecating manner is appealing, and many of her jokes raise a smile, but she needs to work on her confidence to truly take the audience with her.

Rating: * * *

Laura Barnett

The Boy James, C soco

The young company Belt Up return with the show that last year apparently made Stephen Fry cry. But this vague, winsome piece about a boy who just wants to make believe, the girl who threatens his idyll, and the older man who has to leave his boyish self behind, just left me cold.

Rating: * *

Laura Barnett

The Real MacGuffins Pleasance, Baby Grand

To a soundtrack that careers from Rimsky-Korsakov to Bagpuss, Skitsophrenic sees this film-nerdy comic trio tackle the theme of “madness” in a torrent of daft sketches. If there are some conspicuous misses (“Oedipus” should be cut down, “Larry Hagman” cut full-stop), their blend of slapstick, wordplay, childish bickering and benign audience involvement is a generally winning one, and the show moves with a mission.

Rating: * * *

Mark Monahan

Glen Wool, Assembly Rooms

An altercation with an over-zealous border guard leads to a particularly strong, well paced, tightly structured set from the edgily imaginative Canadian. No Man’s Land is typically strong stuff, its payoff downright yucky, but the first-class gags and anecdotes just keep coming, all delivered in the manner of some deliriously crazed prophet. Wool remains one of the most subtly smart, wickedly charming, blazingly theatrical comic storytellers around.